Word: grips
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...cats and dead preppies-the subjects of the five bestselling titles on American campuses last year? These are books for minds at rest. They are also the books favored by the rest of the nation, which suggests that the post-Viet Nam fatigue syndrome has us all in its grip. Your values and interests are no worse or better than those that are filtering down from the larger society that nurtured you. If you have not given your elders any clear sense of who you are, perhaps it is because you are just like your elders. Your priorities...
From the ancient, white-gloved Harvard comparatively little remains. Some truly wonderful institutions survive-morning prayers in Appleton Chapel, for one, and ivy on the walls for another (though these days its grip is perilous). The clubs, they say, are resurgent, but most of the College would have trouble listing half of them by name. And Fox, Fly, Owl, Spee and their kindred are given over now more to fraternity-style carousing and less to gentility (though tuxedos remain de rigger). The preppie movement-the defiant wearing of madras and espadrilles-amounted to not so much...
Backstage, an entire galaxy of misfits awaits him. King is horrified by the "cattle call," an open audition at which nearly 3,000 players vie for fewer than 20 parts. He discovers a homosexual tryst in a packing crate, loses his grip when a chicken called Modine pecks its understudy to death and is replaced by Cluck Gable, and suffers a painful disorientation when he stands in for Leading Man Henderson Forsythe. The amateur actor drops his prop pistol, is smothered by a Texas flag and walks into a brass pole trying to exit. During a pantomime phone call, instead...
...entire country seemed to be in the grip of a patriotic fever. In the capital, blue-and-white national flags adorned everything from office buildings to shop windows to taxicab antennas. Cafés, shops and hotel lobbies buzzed with excited talk of the latest news. Television shows were repeatedly interrupted by grave-sounding announcers reading war bulletins before the backdrop of the national emblem. Crowds gathered outside newsstands to peruse the latest reports. On the Plaza de la República, women sat in the sun knitting wool socks, caps and scarves for the troops on the islands...
What is it about TV news that makes otherwise cogent screenwriters go bananas? Paddy Chayefsky lost his grip on dramaturgy when he constructed his Network. Now Richard Brooks (Elmer Gantry, In Cold Blood) heaves a harangue about world politics and the media, and it is one desperate muddle. Sean Connery plays a superstar reporter who bears messages not only to millions of viewers but, Haiglike, from heads of state to thugs of war. The fate of the world hangs in the balance. What does not balance is Brooks' Strangelovian mix of comic terror and terrorist comedy. Give him points...